FORT SUMTER, 1860-61.
BY ROBERT W. BARNWELL, SR., FLORENCE, S. C.
Coming across the third volume of Rhodes's '' History of the United States,"' I turned with curiosity to see whether he would repudiate or accept the main line of facts as I had often read them in Confederate accounts, and how he would explain the celebrated sentence: ''Faith as to Sumter fully kept.'' I was very much pleased with Rhodes's account.
I believe an account of that tremendous episode with which the war began can but be interesting, and old Confeds will have no reason to blush for their cause or their leaders, even as Rhodes tells the tale. As for the other side, he is quite willing to throw Buchanan to the wolves, but he finds it necessary to hold Seward between Lincoln and the flames. Of course, it is an old subject, but the veterans are now at an age when the past seems ever interesting, so I venture into the deep and somewhat scalding wa'ers, using Rhodes as a basis.
In October, 1860, elections in Indiana and Pennsylvania foretold that Lincoln would carry the day also in those to be held in November. The secession of South Carolina seemed almost a certainty. Colonel Gardner, commanding at Fort Moultrie, in Charleston Harbor, applied for reénforcements, and advised that Sumter and Castle Pinckney also be garrisoned. Gen. Winfield Scott also came forward to urge President Buchanan to garrison strongly all the forts on the Southern coast. This advice was not taken, and Maj. Robert Anderson, relieving Gardner, was sent to Fort Moultrie without any increase of the garrison of about sixty-five men. As Buchanan was trying to prevent secession, the step proposed by those who wanted the Federal government to avoid being caught in a weak condition seemed to him a bad one to take. His term would soon end, and be intended to escape the accusation of provoking the increase of angry feelings. His position was that secession was wrong, but that there was no power given to the Federal government to coerce a State which did in fact secede. All that he was to do must be done before secession, for after that he would be powerless. Scott's anger-increasing proposition was, therefore, rejected.
Of course his policy was exasperating to the North, which saw secession daily approaching and the forts at the mercy of the seceders. In case of war over secession, as seemed almost sure, a vast advantage would be lost. Buchanan, a Northern man, had to antagonize his own people in a juncture where it would do little good and bring him obloquy of extreme sort. In his conscience, he preferred it to helping bring disruption of the Union during his own administration. His Attorney General was Judge Jeremiah Black, a great friend and a great lawyer. He took Buchanan in hand and, by drawing a distinction between coercing a State and holding the forts in her harbors as property and collecting revenue, tried to move him toward Scott's position, but failed.
It soon became evident that South Carolina would certainly secede; but the North had hopes that the ''Cotton States'' would not. Lincoln's election on November 6, brought, on the 10th, a call for South Carolina's secession convention to meet December 17.
Now, of course, Judge Black's idea, that holding the forts and collecting customs did not have the logic or the sting behind it that coercion had, found no place in any Southern mind. Both Buchanan and the South Carolina authorities now labored to preserve the status quo, as the slogan of the day ran, until the new President assumed office. South Carolina, and later the South, may have pressed for decision, but the desire to gain Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and the border States called for patience, and there was a
strong peace party at the North, even among Republicans, trying to bring about compromises of several kinds.
Rhodes very clearly describes the three lines of thought that Northern men took. One was coercion; another, compromise; while the third was letting the ''erring sisters depart in peace.'' But, on the point of holding the forts, the overwhelming sentiment was for holding them. Judge Black's position on this holding-the-forts matter was destined to be the inclined plane by which the entire North was drawn up to coercion. There was great use made of the precedent in Jackson's day, when South Carolina nullified the customs law and Jackson collected them at Castle Pinckney. In vain Buchanan pointed out the difference. The State, still in the Union, did not then dispute the title to the forts, while now she would do so by virtue of resuming her independence.
The foundation of the status quo is not as clear as it might be, in that it was not a formal signed agreement, but in his message at the meeting of Congress, December 3, President Buchanan said, ''The officer in command of the forts has received orders to act strictly on the defensive:" and in two meetings early in December, between himself and the South Carolina representatives, which came about through mutual fears concerning the disturbance of the status, assurances were given on both sides.
At the second meeting, the President refused to sign a memorandum or formally pledge himself, although he had suggested at the first meeting that the substance of their statement be put into writing; but, ''when we rose to go,'' relate Miles and Keitt, ''the President said in substance: "After all, this is a matter of honor among gentlemen. I do not know that any paper or writing is necessary. We understand each other.''' Furthermore, on December 31, Buchanan wrote: ''It is well known that it was my determination, and this I freely expressed, not to reénforce the forts in Charleston Harbor, vy thus produce a collision, until they had been actually at Yacked, or until I had certain evidence that they were about to be attacked.' Finally, when the news of Major Anderson's transfer of his command from Moultrie to Sumter reached Washington on December 26, and Jefferson Davis, still a Senator, broke the news to Buchanan, he was amazed, and appealed to Trescot and Davis as men who better than any knew that ''this is not only without, but against my orders. It is against my policy.'' Asa matter of fact, indeed, the President had sincerely tried to keep the status quo. It was to his interest and honor to do so. How, then, did it come to be broken?
There was a loophole in Anderson's orders, an undesigned loophole in all probability. Floyd, an ex-governor of Virginia, was Secretary of War under Buchanan, and sent the